I always buy candy molds and think, this will be quick and easy! Melt the candy, pour it in, wait… voilà! Candy!

Friends, I am wrong. Every time.

First of all, melting candy is a pain. You can’t just throw it in the microwave for a couple of minutes – it will scorch, and scorched candy is just nasty. You have to microwave it for 30 seconds or less, stir it, repeat. I also add coconut oil to my candy melts to make the end result smoother, thanks to a tip from my cake-ball-master friend Holly.

This year I took my optimism up a notch: I got a mold that would result in a candy container. Yep, 2 pieces of candy that would fit together, hollow inside for treats. Full of this foolish, sugar-laden optimism, I decided to make 2 kinds of candy and a batch of cupcakes, all in the same night. And a work night, at that.

I melted several colors so I could get all fancy and make the candies pretty. I used paintbrushes (yes, they were purchased just for this sort of project, and live in my decorating toolbox – no paint shall ever touch these bristles) to put in the cats’ eyes, noses, and the faces on the jack-o-lanterns. This took considerable time. Meanwhile, I almost forgot that these particular molds were meant to make candy-covered cookies.

The problem turned out to be that I’d already filled the molds a bit too much, and I took so long decorating the cat faces that the jack-o-lanterns were already setting. Oooops. End result: over-filled, bulging candy-coated Oreos. Maybe not super pretty, but super tasty!

My other candy project (remember my optimism?) was the hollow treat-holding pumpkins. I had this idea that I’d make a zillion of them for my coworkers. The mold makes 3 at a time. Spoiler alert: I only made 3. Lucky for me, there are only 3 people on my team at the office! I just pretended I planned it that way. Sshhhh….

I under-filled, then over-filled, then managed to candy-coat a good portion of the counters and my hands, and in the end, the two pieces didn’t exactly fit together like perfect delicious little puzzle pieces. I was disappointed, but let’s face it: I don’t think any of my 3 coworkers noticed.

At this point, it was pretty late and I was pretty tired, but it just so happened I needed to stay up that night to pick up my boyfriend from the airport, so I figured I’d go ahead and do the cupcakes I’d planned on. Yes, I’m kind of insane when it comes to baking. I’m pretty sure that is not a surprise by now.

There it is, 10 o’clock on a Thursday night, and I’m mixing up a batch of yellow cake. It gets worse! Foolish optimism! The cupcakes came out of the oven just in time for me to rush off to the airport, so the decorating step didn’t happen until afterward. What that boils down to is this crazy Bunneh was frosting cupcakes at midnight on a work night. Why? BECAUSE THE WORLD NEEDS CUPCAKES.

I decorated about half of them with purple frosting, and the other half I wanted to do black-and-orange swirl. I didn’t want a lot of black frosting, though, because it turns people’s tongues black. I made just a little black frosting, and here’s the trick to swirling colors when you frost: put each color in its own decorating bag (with the tips snipped off, of course), then put those bags into yet another bag. This final outside bag is the one you’ll put the coupler into, and attach the tip. I like to use a fairly wide tip so the colors have room to come out together but not mix. (I use the Wilton tip #22, for those who like that kind of detail.)

Here’s the end result! After I got them to work, I was inspired and added little plastic spiders as well. Spoooooky!